Bulger killers' ID ban sentence

Social media users Dean Liddle and Neil Harkins have each received nine month jail sentences suspended for 15 months at London's High Court for breaching an injunction banning the revelation of the new identities of toddler James Bulger's killers.

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Social media users Dean Liddle and Neil Harkins have each received nine month jail sentences suspended for 15 months at London's High Court for breaching an injunction banning the revelation of the new identities of toddler James Bulger's killers.

His defence lawyer said that the father of three children aged 10, 8, and 3 stays at home as a house husband and is of good character. Saying he acted in a "foolish" and "naive" way, he thought that it would just go to his 141 followers on Facebook not the more than 24,000 people who shared it.

The court heard that Neil Harkins is a father and has young children and was very upset by the crimes committed by Venables and Thompson.

He put images on his Facebook page on 14th February 2013. Harkins has 141 followers and the images were shared with 24,039 people before he was contacted by the Attorney General and deactivated his account on 28th February.

He commented at the time of posting the picture "interesting that this photo isn't allowed to be shown and there's an investigation on how it got out. What's more interesting is why the he'll (sic) he got released and protected in the first place."

After he became aware he had broken the injunction he wrote to apologise in the fullest terms. He claimed that he had come across the pictures after logging onto a news article online.

The images were posted by Dean Liddle at 1.42am and removed less than an hour later, after questions were raised that they may have got the wrong people. The Twitter profile of Liddle had 915 followers.

The conversation that followed on the social network site said that it might be Venables and Liddle responds: "I was passed these by a friend if there is doubt about it being him I will remove."

He had earlier said in response to suggestion that child killers should be locked up for life: "I don't think that all child killers should be but after release he was arrested for child porn so agree here."

The court has been told by the judge, Sir John Thomas, that it is accepted by these two individuals that there is no distinction between them blogging or tweeting as private individuals and the more traditional media, since their blogs or tweets can be accessed by thousands of people.

He has also told the court that he thinks it would be sensible for the Attorney General to put the injunction in a place where Internet users could easily see or access it.